


method acting

by nikeforova



Series: gambetto [italian, lit. "tripping up"] [1]
Category: The Queen's Gambit (TV)
Genre: Gen, beth deals with the death of her mother, but i wanted to try because i didn't think we got to see enough of her thoughts, i abuse vignette format but for once i didn't use it, it is very hard to accurately characterize beth, mourning fic, this is for my gays with mommy issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:54:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27758722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nikeforova/pseuds/nikeforova
Summary: Beth thinks of tranquilizer pills and a phone that's been off the hook for too long. She wants to cradle Jolene's head in her palms and let the definition of mama pour out onto the table so that she can pick it up and hold it up to the light and say look, here, there's the weakness. That's mama.There are people in labs who do that sort of thing for a living. They slice tissue up real thin—cold, too—and hold it up to a light, and then they say you see that? There's an abnormality in here.She wonders if Jolene would tell her who the woman who raised her is. Or was. There was a woman who held her hands on the flight she took just weeks ago, and now there's a mother-shaped hole in the seat next to her.Or: Beth grieves, grows, and learns that there's just as much in any word as there is on a chessboard.
Relationships: Beth Harmon & Alma Wheatley
Series: gambetto [italian, lit. "tripping up"] [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2030575
Comments: 6
Kudos: 19





	method acting

**Author's Note:**

> i just think Beth Harmon is neat. that's all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pathology: the science of the causes and effects of diseases, especially the branch of medicine that deals with the laboratory examination of samples of body tissue for diagnostic or forensic purposes.
> 
> CW: brief mention of puking/gagging and alcohol consumption

Here is the thing about parents: they are a passing idea when you grow up in an orphanage.

In the orphanage, parents were the people who picked you—the children holding still as if the adults were butterflies, and maybe if they were lucky one would land on them and stay--and brought you home. There wasn't much to the transaction, really, it just _was._ You could feel sorry or angry all you wanted, but it didn't change much. You could sit with those feelings all you wanted while you looked at the empty bed next to you and wondered why it wasn't you.

It wasn't that the orphanage was cold or unfeeling, but more of a lingering feeling that one was, in fact, replaceable.

There was a new girl, once, and Jolene had asked her 'bout her mama. Beth hadn't really heard the answer, but Jolene's reply snagged something.

_That wasn't really your mama then, if she's called mother._

Beth thinks of tranquilizer pills and a phone that's been off the hook for too long. She wants to cradle Jolene's head in her palms and let the definition of _mama_ pour out onto the table so that she can pick it up and hold it up to the light and say _look, here, there's the weakness. That's mama._

There are people in labs who do that sort of thing for a living. They slice tissue up real thin—cold, too—and hold it up to a light, and then they say _you see that? There's an abnormality in here._

She wonders if Jolene would tell her who the woman who raised her is. Or was. There was a woman who held her hands on the flight she took just weeks ago, and now there's a mother-shaped hole in the seat next to her. 

But the thing is that the flight attendant doesn't seem to be bothered by it. LIFE magazine would have a fit of ecstasy over it: Beth Harmon, genius and void-viewer. 

She orders another margarita and sleeps for the rest of the flight.

> ♙ | ♙ | ♙ | ♙ | ♙ | ♙ | ♙ | ♙  
> ---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---  
> ♖ | ♘ | ♗ | ♕ | ♔ | ♗ | ♘ | ♖  
> ---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---  
  
Now that the shock is all turned into sadness, though, it's finally getting heavy. It sticks to her insides, and Beth resigns herself to the fact that it's probably going to be there a while. _Until further notice_ , she imagines the letters, like a pool sign put up when the filter's broken. Most nights, she goes to bed and doesn't dream of anything at all.

There's a pit of anger in her stomach that's been there for years, but it's always been pressed back into her. She thought she'd finally puke it out someday, along with something else, probably, and that would be that. It wasn't so hard to carry anger around. She slams the front door when she gets home and is immediately slammed by a wave of nausea. She stumbles to the couch and heaves, head in her hands. Maybe she had too much to drink.

Apart from the house, everything else turns out to be easy. As much as mother drank, she also wasn't stupid—there's a considerable amount of money that's neatly divided into accounts. Filling out forms is tedious, but it's not exactly challenging. The mail mostly stops coming, and that's how Beth knows it's done.

Beth considers that the process might be easier than she thought because she hasn't stepped foot into her Alma's green bedroom upstairs since the death. That's what it is when profiled: an occasion of death. An inevitable occurrence that happens naturally to people when their body can't sustain them anymore, and it just happened to her mother before anybody thought it would. Before she thought it would. 

Whether her mother's death was unexpected or not isn't really a concern (well, with the provision that she doesn't think about how much her mother loved being alive). It's the third time in her life she's decided not to think about something and pull it apart, run through what-ifs and what-abouts, but it's not difficult. Ignoring questions no matter where they come from is very much a skill, and skills can be learned—oh, is she ever good at learning things when she wants to. 

Still, it gets hard sometimes. It's usually little things (like the extra pad of paper that Beth has to pull out to write down what the funeral director is saying, phone pressed between her ear and shoulder, or the little note scribbled on the kitchen calendar reading _piano tuner_ on September 23rd). How long has it been?

This does not dissuade her from trying harder from ignoring it. She simply flips the page over and looks at the October picture while she eats her cereal in the mornings. Check _and_ mate in a single coordinated motion.

The self-constructed reality in which her mother never existed (or rather, never left) holds up remarkably well: chess, eat, sleep, and long baths.

It works until the piano tuner knocks on the door.

She lets him in. He's a short, balding man who looks like he's having about as much fun as she is, so she leaves him with a short nod and returns to the upstairs.

"All done," he shouts an hour later, and Beth scrambles for her checkbook. 

There's no shortage of tense silence.

"Beautiful piano," the man says, while she's filling out the cents line, and she looks up.

"Hm?"

"Oh, I just—it's a beautiful piano," the man repeats. 

Onto the blurry memo line. Almost done. It's made out for more than it should be. 

"Do you play professionally?"

"No," Beth says, "but my mother was close. Always wanted to." 

There's silence, and Beth finds herself wanting to badly to tell somebody that her mother is _gone,_ gone gone gone.

"She died last week," she blurts out, handing the check to him. 

The man is clearly startled, eyes widening. He doesn't know what to say, or why she would burden him with this.

"I'm a chess player," Beth says. She doesn't know why she says this either.

The man sticks the check into his funny little leather bag and hoists it over his shoulder, following Beth to the door. _Henry,_ his nametag reads. He does have a name. Of course he has a name. Everybody does.

"I'm sorry for your loss," the man named Henry says before Beth opens the door, and then he's gone. Disappeared into the real world, just like that.

Two sides of the same coin. Which side does one call when the coin's in the air and one side's labeled _dead mother_ and the other is _chess player?_

Later, when she goes to bed that night, she dreams that she owns a bag of coins that she is trying to deposit at the bank. _Harmon_ , she says to the teller, and he smiles at her politely before telling her that there is no account with that name. _No Beth Harmon in the system_ , he repeats, mouth twitching slightly as he strains to keep his face impassive, and Beth Harmon dissolves all over the floor and is no more.

> ♙ | ♙ | ♙ | ♙ | ♙ | ♙ | ♙ | ♙  
> ---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---  
> ♖ | ♘ | ♗ | ♕ | ♔ | ♗ | ♘ | ♖  
> ---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---  
  
The house has always been filled with shadows, but a couple of nights later Beth sees the exact figure of her mother at the piano projected onto the drywall.

Shit. There's glass on the floor. _Fuck._

Stepping over the pile, Beth pads into the living room. It's still and untouched, exactly like she knew it would be, and there's a godawful vase on the table that probably made up the image she saw.

Recently, the living room seems to be sleeping, as if it's dreaming of somebody. Maybe that's what she saw. A living room dreaming, or a house in mourning. Who knows? Maybe houses have their own types of funerals for the people that lived in them.

She sweeps up the shards and puts them neatly in the trash can. She'll have to go shopping soon.

The kitchen is so quiet. Beth pulls out a chair to sit at the counter and cries in great shuddering sobs for exactly five minutes and thirty seconds when she sees the calendar flipped to October. It's November something--god help her if she knows, probably the twenty-seventh. _Your move,_ the kitchen says to her, and she sits at the counter with no idea what to do. The house wheedles _draw?_

Borgov be damned if she can't even win chess against a kitchen, she thinks, and moves to get the vodka out of the liquor cabinet over the sink.

It's not as if it's going to be drunk by anybody else at this point.

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me on twt @lovepo3ms !


End file.
